Alex Lutz Talks Juggling Directing & Acting As Gritty Romance ‘Connemara’ With Mélanie Thierry & Bastien Bouillon Plays At TAFFF

Actor and director Alex Lutz touches down in L.A. this weekend for the Northern American Premiere of romantic drama Connemara at The American French Film Festival (TAFFF) on Saturday evening, after which he will participate in an onstage conversation.

The work, which world premiered in Cannes in May, is the fourth solo feature in the director’s seat for Lutz, who has more than 60 film and TV acting credits under his belt, with roles including Pierre Bergé in the Hulu series Becoming Karl Lagerfeld and his César-winning performance as jaded pop star in Guywhich he also directed.

In ConnemaraMélanie Thierry (The Zero Theorem, Da 5 Bloods) stars as burned-out executive Hélène who returns to her nondescript childhood hometown in France’s north-eastern Vosges region to reset, where she reconnects with childhood friend Christophe, played by Bastien Bouillon.

The former local ice hockey champion never left the town and is now a single father living in straitened circumstances as he juggles looking after his son and elderly father.

Lutz has adapted the feature from the 2022 eponymous novel by Nicolas Mathieu, whose And Their Children After Them was also adapted to the big screen by directorial duo Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma in 2024.

“I’d done a romance before, Strangers by Nightwith Karine Viard but there was something in this story, which was more sombre than a classic romance,” says Lutz.

“There were also a number of themes that interested me enormously such as the passing of time and the question of what it means to stay or leave when you come from a smalltown, and what it’s like to return to a smalltown in the provinces, having left and built a career in a big city.”

“This is the case of Hélène, who was that girl next door, who studied like crazy to achieve professional success, with a life in Paris, two kids and an apartment that looks like something out of Elle magazine… but then she hits her 40s and suffers a real burnout.”

Lutz was also drawn to the setting of the film, a peri-urban hinterland, which is neither the town nor countryside.

“There are places like this all over Europe on the outskirts of towns, which are a mix of small houses with commercial zones… everything looks very convenient but there’s also social violence underneath.”

Lutz co-wrote the screenplay with Amélia Guyader and Hadrien Bichet, who was his first assistant director on Strangers by Nightover three stages.

“I started off on my own and was joined very quickly by Amélia. She did a lot of work with me, analyzing the novel. We really dissected the novel,” recounts Lutz.

“We built the screenplay as if we were trying to create a skeleton from the novel, stripping away the layers. When I had a version, I was happy with, I spent some time alone with it again.”

“In the final stretch, on the last drafts of the script, I worked with my wonderful artistic collaborator, Hadrien Bichet… He’s also a screenwriter, and director too, so it was a real joy to have this final, collaborative writing process.”

On the casting of the film, Lutz says he had been tracking the work of Bouillon since around 2022, when his career started to really take off with his role in Dominik Moll’s The Night Of The 12thwhich played in the Cannes Premiere section in 2022, the same year Guy world premiered in Cannes Critics’ Week.

“And I’ve always liked Mélanie, so they’re people I’ve been following for a few years now, although I wasn’t set on them initially. I had lots of ideas,” says Lutz.

“I first offered the role to Bastien… I didn’t want to fall into the trap of showing an athletic guy, who is a bit overweight, suffering inside. I felt the character needed a sort of energy, and how do I say this, something almost feminine, with elegance.

“Bastien offered all of these elements… he also has this ability to completely light up the screen, at the same time as being completely down to earth.”

Lutz discussed the role of Hélène with a number of actresses but was impressed with how the character resonated with Thierry, while she also offered an element of grit that he was looking for.

“I didn’t want a female character in the vein of a Jane Austen heroine. I wanted there to be anger, hardness, and to show the challenges facing a woman in a high-profile job, while managing her family, who allows herself, as she says, to let her hair down for once.”

Connemara is the first feature directed by Lutz in which he does not also co-star, but the actor-director points to his long-running and ongoing work in the theater, where he got his first big breaks as an actor and then director in the 1990s, creating his own company Le Coût de la pomme in 1996.

“I’ve directed a lot of theater without being in the cast, so it’s not something new to me,” he says.

He adds it is impossible for him to say whether he prefers acting over directing but admits his sweet spot is mixing the two

“It can be complicated but I love directing at the same time as playing in films.”

Diagnosed with dyslexia as a child, Lutz reveals his biggest challenge remains writing, even if he loves to write.

“I always have this feeling of having to get my homework in… even if I’ve written books, plays and films, this feeling never goes away, while acting and directing actors, that’s something else entirely, I think because it’s not connected to my chaotic scholastic path,” he explains.

Alongside, acting and directing, Lutz has recently added another string to his bow, with the creation of production company Grands Ducs Films with Bichet and Thomas Santucci, in partnership with Studiocanal.

Projects in the early stages of development include a TV drama series in which two characters, with nothing in common, find themselves forced to spend time together.

“It could be because a plane doesn’t take off, or another unexpected circumstances… and it may be tied to a certain location like an airport… we’re thinking about it now,” he says.

In the meantime, Lutz will next be seen on the big screen in Isabelle Carré’s The Reversabout a woman who overcomes mental health issues through theatre, which hits French cinemas on November 12.